Far NE has a new lawmaker

State Rep. Ed Neilson, sworn in­to of­fice last week, is try­ing to find a con­veni­ent dis­trict of­fice loc­a­tion in the North­east.

In the mean­time, Neilson (D-169th dist.) in­vites con­stitu­ents to call his Har­ris­burg of­fice at 717-787-4331 for as­sist­ance with state-re­lated ser­vices such as PennDOT is­sues and Prop­erty Tax/Rent Re­bate ap­plic­a­tions.

In ad­di­tion, res­id­ents are en­cour­aged to sign up for peri­od­ic e-mail up­dates from Neilson on state is­sues and ser­vices. They can go to www.pa­house.com/neilson and click on “E-Mail Alerts” on the left side of his home page.

Neilson is a former polit­ic­al dir­ect­or of In­ter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Elec­tric­al Work­ers Loc­al 98 and formerly served as deputy sec­ret­ary of the state De­part­ment of Labor and In­dustry. Most re­cently, he’s handled gov­ern­ment re­la­tions and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment for a law firm.

The 169th Dis­trict seat be­came avail­able at the end of 2011, when Re­pub­lic­an Denny O’Bri­en was elec­ted to City Coun­cil.

Neilson de­feated Dave Kralle, a former O’Bri­en aide, in an April 24 spe­cial elec­tion and will serve un­til the end of the year.

“I am honored to have been chosen by the people of the 169th Dis­trict and look for­ward to rep­res­ent­ing them in Har­ris­burg,” he said. “I look for­ward to hit­ting the ground run­ning and get­ting mean­ing­ful work done to be­ne­fit the com­mon­wealth as a whole. We have to fo­cus on cre­at­ing sus­tain­able jobs, im­prov­ing the edu­ca­tion­al cli­mate and hon­or­ing and pro­tect­ing the eld­erly. I’m look­ing for­ward to work­ing with my col­leagues to cre­ate real and ef­fect­ive solu­tions to those is­sues.”

The in­cum­bent will face Kralle again in the Nov. 6 gen­er­al elec­tion, with the win­ner earn­ing a two-year term.

The Le­gis­lat­ive Re­ap­por­tion­ment Com­mis­sion has tent­at­ively de­cided to move the seat to York County. Neilson hopes Demo­crats de­cide to keep the seat in Phil­adelphia now that he has won it. ••